It is defined as a mass extermination of a particular group of people - exemplified by the efforts of the Nazis to eradicate the Jewish population in the 1940s. But behind that simple definition is a complicated tangle of legal concepts concerning what constitutes genocide and when the term can be applied.The term genocide was coined in 1943 by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who combined the Greek word "genos" (race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (to kill).
After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, in which every member of his family except his brother was killed, Dr Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognised as a crime under international law.
His efforts gave way to the adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention in December 1948, which came into effect in January 1951.
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such":
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The convention also imposes a general duty on states that are signatories to "prevent and to punish" genocide.Since its adoption, the UN treaty has come under criticism from different sides, mostly by people frustrated with the difficulty of applying it to specific cases. Some have argued that the definition is too narrow; others that it is devalued by overuse.Some analysts say the definition of genocide is so narrow that none of the mass killings perpetrated since the treaty's adoption would fall under it.
The objections most frequently raised against the treaty include: The convention excludes targeted political and social groups
The definition is limited to direct acts against people, and excludes acts against the environment which sustains them or their cultural distinctiveness Proving intention beyond reasonable doubt is extremely difficult UN member states are hesitant to single out other members or intervene, as was the case in Rwanda There is no body of international law to clarify the parameters of the convention (though this is changing as UN war crimes tribunals issue indictments) The difficulty of defining or measuring "in part", and establishing how many deaths equal genocide But in spite of these criticisms, there are many who say genocide is recognisable.In his book Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century, the former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Alain Destexhe, wrote: "Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it."Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group. Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity."Mr Destexhe has voiced concern that the term genocide has fallen victim to "a sort of verbal inflation, in much the same way as happened with the word fascist", becoming "dangerously commonplace".Michael Ignatieff, former director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, has agreed, arguing that the term has come to be used as a "validation of every kind of victimhood". "Slavery, for example, is called genocide when - whatever it was, and it was an infamy - it was a system to exploit, rather than to exterminate the living," Mr Ignatieff said in a lecture. The differences over how genocide should be defined have also led to disagreements on how many genocides occurred during the 20th Century.
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